TONSTURM releases WHEEL OF STRINGS - Rotating strings VSTi for composers

Out Now: WHEEL OF STRINGS
A new wheel of sound begins to turn
Our new music VSTi based on a hurdy gurdy

Special introductory offer – 2 weeks only!
$ 99.00 US (excl. VAT)
until Dec 9th 25
($149.00 US)
Get it here: https://tonsturm.com/product/wheel-of-strings

Introducing the Wheel Of Strings for NI Kontakt
We’re excited to introduce Wheel of Strings, our new virtual instrument for composers. It’s built from the sound of master luthier Guido Falke’s hurdy-gurdies, but it’s not a strict 1:1 hurdy-gurdy recreation.

Instead, Wheel of Strings is designed as an expressive pad and texture instrument: evolving drones, airy harmonic beds, subtle movement and organic grit. Plus more synth-like tones and plucky, bright sounds that work beautifully for arpeggios. All captured purely from the original hurdy-gurdy recordings and made playable as a modern scoring tool.

12 play styles: select 1 of 10 articulations. Independent Drone and Trompette layers are permanently mapped to the lower and upper keyboard ranges, respectively. The same as in Spiral Strings.
No pre-recorded phrases, fully playable. Wheel of Strings was sampled note-by-note. What you hear are long, expressive sustains with rich overtones, wheel noise and subtle movement, not locked riffs. Because the material isn’t bound to fixed phrases, you can play any key, any scale, and sculpt textures in real time.
Three round robins of 10-25 second long files
Three microphone positions – recorded with low-noise sounddesign mics and vintage and modern Hi-End gear grails
Uncommon True Stereo Reverb engine with our own crazy IR’s

The Hurdy Gurdy
The idea began while recording our Sentient Frequencies sound pack, when instrument maker Guido Falke performed his hurdy-gurdy in a chapel for the FX side.
Hearing its musical voice, we felt it deserved a dedicated instrument, so we invited Guido back to record it as a performer, not just for effects.


Masterfully captured from every angle
To do Wheel of Strings justice, we recorded the hurdy-gurdys in a world-class room-in-room studio, designed for absolute control and silence. Every session was focused on capturing the full character of the instrument, from the airy bow noise and shimmering overtones to the growling low end.

We used multiple mic perspectives so you can shape the sound exactly as you like: spacious room mics with Stereo sets of Sennheiser MKH 8020 and 8090, a detailed close MS setup with MKH 30 and MKH 8040 plus a Schoeps MK41 and MK2 with digital preamp (CMD 42) for extra focus and definition.
For the body resonance we added a piezzo “The Inducer” from Trance Audio and a LOM geophone to capture the deepest low-frequency movement of the instrument.

All of this comes together in Wheel of Strings as a playable, mix-ready instrument that feels like sitting right in front of a beautifully recorded hurdy-gurdy.

Microphones:
Close:
Mics: Schoeps MK41 and MK2 with digital preamp CMD 42, Sennheiser MKH8040 and 30
Body:
Mics: 2 x Trance Audio The Inducer, LOM Geofon
Room:
Mics: 2 x Sennheiser MKH 8020 and Sennheiser MKH 8090 Mixed

Size:
5112 samples
Over 28 GB disk space required during install
Full retail version of Native Instruments Kontakt 6 or later required